The Secret Of Dreams
by secretfanficlover
Summary: Hermione's true love falls into a deep sleep, unable to be awoken by typical fairy tale means, and she does what she does best, finds a logical solution to bring him back. Warnings: Student/teacher, unconsented kisses.


**This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.**

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Word Count: 2549

Title: The Secret Of Dreams

Note: Written as a gift fic for Lyrrie (Herochick007)

Warnings: suggestive language and themes, student/teacher. Also unconsented kisses. Also according to my knowledge the age for consenting adults is sixteen, but the "spell" comes into effect on her seventeenth birthday, which explains the dreams etc.

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Golden Snitch

[Name] Crissie

[School] Uagadou

[House] Ogyinae

Care of Magical Creatures: Veela- write about someone attractive

Olivanders: 10–11 inch: Write about a Slytherin character.

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Hogwarts

Assignment 6: Task 7 - Write a classic fairytale theme with a twist.

Gift Fic: Lyrrie- 13th October

[Pairing] Severus/Hermione

[AU] Soulmate

[Genre] Fluff/Romance

[Extra] Mild Ron Bashing

Yearly:

Prompt 971 [Title] The Secret of Dreams

Word 151 [Word] Theory

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Rumour has it that the reason Severus Snape was always in such a foul mood, was the fact that he had never had true love's kiss. Now many of the students, male and female alike, tried to dismiss this as a silly fairytale. It was a subject of fascination to a lot of them. Rumours were hard to come by in a place like Hogwarts, and anything worth gossiping about became a big spectacle.

"They say professor Snape is a virgin," Ron said.

"Goodness, Ron! That is none of your business," Hermione scolded him. "Besides, there is nothing wrong with waiting."

Harry gave her a curious look, and she could tell he wondered why she often came up for Snape during these new discussions. It seemed like before she wasn't interested in indulging in gossip, but she didn't pay them any mind either, yet recently that all changed.

A month before Hermione turned seventeen, she started having strange dreams. Dreams about Severus Snape being her soulmate, it couldn't be right, she reasoned, but somehow the feelings began to evolve without her consent.

She started to see into those black eyes, and she saw something lonely that called to her soul.

It was the trophy room where they had their first connection. Hermione had accidentally gotten separated from the other two during their nightly excursion, and who was there but Severus Snape himself. He looked at her with a gentleness she had never seen before he tried to hide his expression from her eyes.

"Granger, what are you doing here at this hour?" Severus asked. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and the luminous light from the trophy cases shone through the room, making it look almost ethereal. She noticed neither of them had said a word since his question, and he was waiting for a reply. She was shocked. He wasn't the "ask questions first" type, not ever.

"I don't think you want to know," she admitted honestly.

"Well, please get to bed Her… miss Granger," he said, they both noticed the slip, but she wasn't about to stick around and wait to see if she lost house points for Gryffindor. She felt his eyes follow her out of the trophy room, and her heart was racing for an entirely different reason. Could he be the one? Could it be that the animosity between them stemmed from sexual tension yet to manifest itself once she reached maturity? It surely seemed probable.

It felt strange to her, like her first name on his lips was like a caress, which stopped suddenly, leaving her wanting. That night her dreams took her to the trophy room again, the scene was the same, but the outcome, different.

She dreamt of a passionate encounter between her and Severus, their heated kisses leading to them knocking into one of the trophy cases. His eyes were shining with love, and she knew she was the one to break the spell. Could he indeed be under a spell? She wasn't sure, but her imagination was going wild once she realised that this man was her soulmate. How would she get him to admit he wanted her?

It wasn't illegal, after all, only strange. Hermione knew what people would say, but she only cared about one thing- or rather, one man, Severus Snape. She needed to find the secret to her dreams. The feeling intensified every time they were in a room together, making Potions unbearable for Hermione, for an entirely different reason than it used to be.

Severus avoided her as much as possible, actively ignoring her instead of mocking her, his wicked tongue found a new target.

"Oh for goodness sake, Weasley!" Snape bellowed at Ron, while his eyes flickered quickly over to her. "It is not impossible to cut a flobberworm correctly," he said. "Ten points from Gryffindor!" She couldn't help but smile. Some things would never change. She couldn't help but wonder when his eyes went back over to her, and then he turned his back on the trio. Had he been looking at her?

She spent her time walking past the trophy room, wondering if her dream was a kind of warning of what was to come. If her subconscious was revealing a secret, she wasn't quite ready to learn. Nothing remarkable happened until her birthday when the announcement came over breakfast.

"Professor Snape has fallen unconscious due to a spell that can only be broken by true love's first kiss," Albus Dumbledore said over breakfast. Hermione turned red at the announcement, not only did the thought of her actual soulmate being unconscious make her feel frustrated, but her logical mind was questioning why the teachers were all on the "true love" parade. It wouldn't take her long to find out, though.

Her parents had sent her gifts with one of the school owls, letters of home, a necklace commemorating her coming of age in the Wizarding world. It would be another year before Muggles would consider her an adult.

"Happy birthday, 'Mione," Harry said, giving her a sweet hug and passing over a present to her. It was heavy.

"You didn't have to," she said with a blush.

"Open it," he insisted.

She opened it to find it was a large book of the classic Grimm fairy tales, which spoke about the darker side of fairy tales that weren't often the ones the children got told.

"Oh, Harry, thank you," she grinned. He knew her guilty pleasure was those tales that didn't always have a happy ending, and he had chosen the perfect present.

"You're welcome," he said. "What's on your mind?" He asked it was clear she was in thought.

"You know the story about Professor Snape," she said suddenly.

"Yeah, seems silly, doesn't it?" Harry asked.

She nodded but seemed serious when she spoke again. "Severus is my soulmate," she said, as she spoke the words she found the truth in them.

"Well, then go kiss him?" Harry said, suddenly. She laughed at the sudden change in his opinion.

"Harry, surely Wizards can think of a better method of waking a sleeping man than sexual harassment," she replied logically.

"But, you know you are the one so that it wouldn't be wrong," Harry insisted. But Hermione wasn't one to let herself be convinced once she decided one way or another.

"I need to stop this madness," she said, standing up from the table and walking over to the headmaster. She needed to find out where her soulmate was

"Headmaster," she said, walking right up to him.

"Yes, miss Granger?" He said with his curious twinkling eyes.

"Where is Severus?" She asked she forgot all sense of manners in addressing a Professor by his first name, but Dumbledore didn't seem to notice or didn't mind.

"Let me show you," he said, leading her to the… the trophy room? She laughed; this must be a cosmic joke.

"Miss Granger, this is no laughing matter," Dumbledore said, looking oddly serious.

"Of course it is, we are Wizards that believe that Muggle fairy tales are the solution to a Magical curse," she muttered, but it was clear the headmaster was paying her no mind.

She saw him, and her heart rate sped up, and her breathing became shallow. She counted her lucky stars they didn't put him in a glass case like sleeping beauty, although his looks memorised her. Suddenly the idea of kissing him appealed to her, but she wasn't about to go around kissing anyone unconscious, soulmate or not.

Her memories went back to the night in this very room when he was alive and watching her, it was so much more romantic than this stark atmosphere, too much light, and a bunch of Professors who seemed to be aiming to wake him up- by kissing him.

She watched Professor McGonagall walked over to where Severus lay and leant over to kiss him. It short fury through her that someone else was touching her man without his permission. She wasn't usually the possessive type, but goes with finding your soulmate, she guessed. She said nothing as the string of teachers walked over to her sleeping soulmate, and kissed him, one by one.

She withheld her anger at the violation of her soulmate in this way, and her eyes widened as she spotted Dumbledore join the cue again a second time, eating a mint and saying: "Maybe it wasn't a proper kiss," as if he was trying to prove he was indeed the one true love of Severus Snape. She just sighed and shook her head at them.

After they realised it obviously wouldn't work, they started asking students, and it wasn't shocking not many of them wanted to line up to kiss the Professor. Hermione went to the library, taking a few books on curses, soul mates and so on, and sat beside the hospital wing bed the headmaster decided to roll into the trophy room.

"Idiots, a bunch of adults thinking true love's kiss will fix everything, what a silly theory," she muttered softly, her nose in a book. She looked up at Severus's sleeping form and sighed. "Why does it need to be up to me to be the logical one?" She continued.

It took her hours bent over books to find what she needed. It did seem to be a magical curse. When she reached a section on falling into a sleep-like death, she muttered: "Yes!"

_The story about sleeping beauty is rumoured to be based upon this hex that was created by a jealous man who feared his woman would sway, so he cursed the woman to seem repulsive to everyone except her true love. It was noted that the man then decided he wasn't really in love with her after all, leaving her shortly after the incident. When the curse was discovered and investigated, it was noted that the effects of it were irreversible. _

_This curse had been used in more occasions, leading to the realisation that if the soulmate of the person in question wasn't born yet, or a lot younger, it has the unforeseen risk of the cursed person to fall into a death-like sleep on the soulmates seventeenth birthday. _

_Unlike the fairy tale, the solution is not as simple as a kiss. The soulmate in question needs to tie a piece of yarn around both the cursed and their own hand. Then the soulmate needs to find the lover in the dream state. It is noted that the cursed lose their way in the dream world, unable to wake without the yarn to lead them back to the world of the living._

"Perfect, I'll save you, my love," Hermione whispered, the tender endearment coming to her without thought. She knew what to do now, and she would be back tonight with everything she needed to lead him back to her. "Take a leap of faith," she added to herself, going to the Gryffindor common room to get some supplies for her mission.

She made sure to grab some yarn before taking a blanket to transform into a bed next to him. Then made her way to the trophy room in the middle of the night. She couldn't ask her friends for help at this time. This was her journey alone. She couldn't fail to bring him back. She tied the other end of the yarn to the bed for good measure.

She tried to go to sleep, but her makeshift blanket bed wasn't all that comfortable. It took ages before she eventually felt herself drift off into a dream world. She couldn't see the yarn, but she could feel it tied around her hand.

She was walking through a meadow when she spotted Severus sitting beneath a large oak tree, he was eating sweets, and it was clear that he was at a much younger age than she knew him.

"Severus," she said, and he looked up and met her eyes with a grin.

"Hermione," he replied, not moving, he gestured for her to walk over and sit next to him.

"Isn't this place fabulous?" Severus asked her.

"Is it? I find it unnerving," Hermione replied.

"You can just think of anything, and it appears, watch," he said, making an apple tree appear out of nowhere.

"But it's not real," she insisted.

"What's so great about the real world?" He asked. She touched his hand and felt a shiver rush through her body. He grinned at her, popping another chocolate frog into his mouth.

"Come home with me," she said urgently. She wasn't sure how much time would pass in the dream and didn't want the headmaster finding them and separating them.

"Hogwarts isn't home," he muttered.

"Then we will make our own, together," she said with a smile.

"You would want me as I am? Not like this," he asked curiously, pointing down at his much younger frame.

"I love you," she said earnestly. She felt Severus's hand squeeze hers back.

"You truly love me?" He asked again.

"Of course, more than anything," she admitted.

"I love you too, I never thought… It felt wrong, you know," he said.

"Because of the age difference?" She asked.

Severus nodded, "I'm as old as Potter's father; I could be your father."

"Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together? Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences, and I know you," she said.

"Interesting point of view, but you don't know me," Severus said, "if you did, you would run."

"Then tell me," she insisted, not letting go of his hand in hers.

"We can have everything we want, right here, I can give you gifts of gold and jewellery and anything your heart desires," he tried, one last time.

"I don't need all these things to be happy. I just need you."

It took what felt like hours before the two of them were ready to leave. Hermione was anxious, but she knew how much it meant to Severus to set his mind at ease. She needed him to want to go back, and she wasn't going to make him leave if he didn't want to go.

When they awoke in the trophy room, hearing the clock strike midnight, they realised they were once again together in the middle of the night. He leant in towards her as if he was about to kiss her, and then he paused.

"What? What's wrong?" She asked, surprised he didn't take the chance to kiss her finally.

"Are you sure you want this?" Severus asked with a strangely stern look on his face. She smiled and nodded.

"Of course," she said. Severus moved the last few inches and finally claimed the lips he had been waiting for for the previous twenty years. They both got lost in their first kiss; knowing that this was what they had both longed to have. As she kissed him, her mind held only one thought: _'home'_.

"At least there's a silver lining," Severus said as they broke apart, his face was holding a grin that she had never seen before. She nodded. "I suppose I did go a little bit mad, didn't I?"

"We all go a little mad sometimes," she said with a shrug.


End file.
